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Semi professional musician here. Repetition goes way beyond what the author mentions: - Most music is highly repetitive, often recycling 2 or 3 short segments

Semi professional musician here. Repetition goes way beyond what the author mentions: - Most music is highly repetitive, often recycling 2 or 3 short segments (chorus, verse) with minor variations to fill out a whole song. Coltrane is known for his avant-garde composition, and even he repeats (often on a much smaller scale than a pop tune). - The work of being a musician is repetitive. Learning (memorizing) songs takes reps! Then you've got to keep them fresh, teach them to new band members, etc. You probably have a limited book, and you know what the crowd pleasers are. Unless you're big enough to have a following cutting a song you're sick of isn't a problem, but filling out a set might be. Between rehearsal, gigs and practicing at home I probably play through most of my band's book at least twice a week. - Being a musician is very physical, which means you're drilling exercises in your daily routine. As a brass player, I run more or less the same set of warmups, range builders and flexibility exercises every day. Drummers do rudiments. String players have their own shtick. As far as listening to music, I don't typically put something on repeat unless I'm trying to transcribe it. But I'll listen to a song, and there's a chance it'll play on repeat in my head all day (or all week!). Steely Dan and LCD Soundsystem are particular earworms for me. It wasn't until college I realized this isn't true for many people.

klodolph 4y ago
I’ll add to this—when writing music, a lot of people (myself included) make the mistake of not using enough repetition!
- grasshopperpurp 4y ago
  I think this is right. A lot of my favorite music finds ways to rotate what's repeating. It finds a balance of keeping the groove while still playing with the listener's expectations. But, to your point, if there isn't enough repetition, there's not enough to grab hold of. Obviously, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish, but for most applications, you want to give the listener engaged with your music. Beyond, or beneath, song structure, I've noticed that experienced songwriters repeat notes in their melodies more often than people starting out.
  - joveian 4y ago
    mpv skips forward a minute with the up key (sometimes to keyframes by default, but not with flac it seems) and it surprises me a bit how often you can do that and the music doesn't change at all, or only changes slightly :/.
reid 4y ago
Beats on repeat repeating on me… LCD Soundsystem is great for this.
tomcam 4y ago
Except one Trane solo is worth about 4 regular songs’ in complexity
david927 4y ago
Some composers are more repetitive than others. There’s an old joke: Knock knock Who’s there? Philip Glass Knock knock Who’s there? Philip Glass Knock knock Who’s there? Philip Glass
- tkgally 4y ago
  On the opposite end of the spectrum is Elliott Carter. He intentionally tried to avoid repetition in his works. I was into his string quartets for a while about forty-five years ago but haven’t heard them since. Maybe it’s time to listen to them again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wse3ZoUXo5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wse3ZoUXo5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQgZEGsUpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQgZEGsUpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6njANe60Evw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6njANe60Evw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi0JwXruBig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi0JwXruBig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m4341zPZNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m4341zPZNY
  - mettamage 4y ago
    Stockhausen! I don’t remember much repetition from him either
  - adzm 4y ago
    > He intentionally tried to avoid repetition in his works. I was into his string quartets for a while about forty-five years ago but haven’t heard them since. I'd argue that the lack of repetition led to things being less memorable.
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
      Who would argue against some things being more easily forgotten when they aren't repeated?
  - illegalmemory 4y ago
    "On the opposite end of the spectrum is Elliott Carter. He intentionally tried to avoid repetition in his works." Yes, exactly ! That is why Elliott`s work sound like instruments talking to one another, like 4 instruments talking to each other with emotions & expressions each instrument having a specific character. On the other hand generally we perceive some degree to repeatability as music.
tsimionescu 4y ago
> Most music is highly repetitive, often recycling 2 or 3 short segments (chorus, verse) with minor variations to fill out a whole song. Coltrane is known for his avant-garde composition, and even he repeats (often on a much smaller scale than a pop tune). I'll note that a pop music current that has, I think, even less repetition than someone like Coltrane was the Progressive Rock genre, especially the originals in the early 1970s. Bands like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant - they were all producing 10-20 minute songs that used repetition sparingly, instead of relying on a typical verse-chorus-verse structure. Not exclusively, mind, but each had quite a few, typically as centerpieces of their albums.
- thorin 4y ago
  Prog is still alive and well. I love King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard. My fav lesser known prog is Caravan.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    I'll give them a listen. I've tried to listen to a few things like Marillion and Dream Theater before, but it didn't seem to me that they get anywhere close to something like Yes' Close to the Edge. I'd be happy to find some other band that maybe does, especially if they are even newer.
    - pbronez 4y ago
      Check out Haken https://hakenmusic.com/ https://hakenmusic.com/
      - technothrasher 4y ago
        Thanks for this. I'm listening to "Aquarius" now and I like what I hear so far.
    - technothrasher 4y ago
      > Marillion My entire late 80's high school days were pretty much just listening to Marillion over and over again until my Walkman would wear out the cassette and I'd have to get another copy. Just something about Fish's brooding bitter anger appealed to my angsty teenage mind. Once Fish left though, they quickly moved away from what I was interest in listening to. These days the one prog album I seem to keep going back to is "Tales From the Lush Attic" by IQ, although "Relayer" by Yes has been getting some good play lately.
elevaet 4y ago
> Coltrane is known for his avant-garde composition, and even he repeats (often on a much smaller scale than a pop tune). "A love supreme" immediately sprang to mind.. I guess all that repetition worked.
FumblingBear 4y ago
Thanks for sharing your experience with us! I'm not a professional musician, but I've played and performed in different settings for about 15 years. Until reading your comment, I didn't realize that many people don't get songs stuck in their head. I often get very long and complex songs stuck in my head for hours to days. Sometimes it's just portions, but sometimes it can be the full song. I don't quite know how to describe my recollection of music, but it seems to be somewhat akin to eiditic memory, but for sounds. After looking into things, the term eichoic memory seems to come up, but I'm not sure it quite encapsulates what I'm trying to express. Out of curiousity, do you have aphantasia? I do, and often wonder if the strength of my music recollection comes from a lack of visual recollection in my mind. Sometimes it takes a few listens to fully memorize a song, but I can revisit music many years later and still have perfect recollection of the piece despite the complexity of the music I tend towards. For example, my favorite band is Between the Buried and Me (a progressive metal band) and their compositions tend to use a ton of complex and mixed meter, as well as non-repetitive rhythmic patterns. Despite all that, I have perfect recollection of their music—even for songs over 17 minutes long. Sorry for the long response—your comment just triggered some things I've been thinking about for a while and I wanted to process them and share.
- geoelectric 4y ago
  I have aphantasia, and I also remember songs in multiple parts vividly. I won't go so far as to say it's eichoic--I can't, for example, turn around and just play a version of it on piano like some people I know, and I'm fairly sure I'm recalling an approximation in a lot of cases--but it's a detailed enough recollection I can "listen" to songs that way by recalling them. It's very much in contrast to my non-existent ability to recall even a familiar image. I've considered cause/effect on this before and personally just decided it was probably coincidence combined with my poor visual memory making the other types seem that much more impressive. There's no particular compensatory mechanism I can think of that would explain remembering sound better because I remember vision worse. Interestingly, I've never been any better at composition (i.e., imagining novel music) because of this. To the extent I've composed, I still pick stuff out a part at a time and figure out how it fits rather than starting with a finished sound in my head to recreate.
dhosek 4y ago
I once had a gig playing piano at a restaurant. It was a weekday mid-day stretch and I was scheduled for about 3 or 4 hours, as I recall. I put together about a 90 minute set of stuff out of my fake books that I figured I could do without embarrassing myself and surely no one would stay at the restaurant longer than 90 minutes. Well, being weekday mid-day, the restaurant was nearly empty and there was some guy who sat there by himself for over two hours. I ended up taking some of my standards and doing what I could to stretch them out, playing lots of repeats, doing extended improvs over the changes. I turned Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” which I normally did as about a 4–5 minute piece following the structure of the Maynard Ferguson version which was the basis for the charts that I originally learned the song from into a 10 minute piece with extended improvs and some bonus repeats. “Night Train” turned into another 10-minute number. And this guy just did not leave. Finally, when I was almost out of material, he got up, dropped a twenty¹ in my tip jar and headed out. ⸻ 1. I also got paid by the restaurant, but as I recall, he was the only customer out of the single-digit number of diners in the restaurant who left a tip.
philipov 4y ago
You know that feeling when you wake up in the morning, and the first thought in your head is the sound of the song that's been there for 3 days already? You must have been dreaming the song before you woke up!

klodolph 4y ago

I’ll add to this—when writing music, a lot of people (myself included) make the mistake of not using enough repetition!

grasshopperpurp 4y ago
I think this is right. A lot of my favorite music finds ways to rotate what's repeating. It finds a balance of keeping the groove while still playing with the listener's expectations. But, to your point, if there isn't enough repetition, there's not enough to grab hold of. Obviously, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish, but for most applications, you want to give the listener engaged with your music. Beyond, or beneath, song structure, I've noticed that experienced songwriters repeat notes in their melodies more often than people starting out.
- joveian 4y ago
  mpv skips forward a minute with the up key (sometimes to keyframes by default, but not with flac it seems) and it surprises me a bit how often you can do that and the music doesn't change at all, or only changes slightly :/.

reid 4y ago

Beats on repeat repeating on me… LCD Soundsystem is great for this.

tomcam 4y ago

Except one Trane solo is worth about 4 regular songs’ in complexity

david927 4y ago

Some composers are more repetitive than others. There’s an old joke: Knock knock Who’s there? Philip Glass Knock knock Who’s there? Philip Glass Knock knock Who’s there? Philip Glass

tkgally 4y ago
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Elliott Carter. He intentionally tried to avoid repetition in his works. I was into his string quartets for a while about forty-five years ago but haven’t heard them since. Maybe it’s time to listen to them again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wse3ZoUXo5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wse3ZoUXo5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQgZEGsUpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQgZEGsUpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6njANe60Evw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6njANe60Evw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi0JwXruBig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi0JwXruBig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m4341zPZNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m4341zPZNY
- mettamage 4y ago
  Stockhausen! I don’t remember much repetition from him either
- adzm 4y ago
  > He intentionally tried to avoid repetition in his works. I was into his string quartets for a while about forty-five years ago but haven’t heard them since. I'd argue that the lack of repetition led to things being less memorable.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    Who would argue against some things being more easily forgotten when they aren't repeated?
- illegalmemory 4y ago
  "On the opposite end of the spectrum is Elliott Carter. He intentionally tried to avoid repetition in his works." Yes, exactly ! That is why Elliott`s work sound like instruments talking to one another, like 4 instruments talking to each other with emotions & expressions each instrument having a specific character. On the other hand generally we perceive some degree to repeatability as music.

tsimionescu 4y ago

> Most music is highly repetitive, often recycling 2 or 3 short segments (chorus, verse) with minor variations to fill out a whole song. Coltrane is known for his avant-garde composition, and even he repeats (often on a much smaller scale than a pop tune). I'll note that a pop music current that has, I think, even less repetition than someone like Coltrane was the Progressive Rock genre, especially the originals in the early 1970s. Bands like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant - they were all producing 10-20 minute songs that used repetition sparingly, instead of relying on a typical verse-chorus-verse structure. Not exclusively, mind, but each had quite a few, typically as centerpieces of their albums.

thorin 4y ago
Prog is still alive and well. I love King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard. My fav lesser known prog is Caravan.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  I'll give them a listen. I've tried to listen to a few things like Marillion and Dream Theater before, but it didn't seem to me that they get anywhere close to something like Yes' Close to the Edge. I'd be happy to find some other band that maybe does, especially if they are even newer.
  - pbronez 4y ago
    Check out Haken https://hakenmusic.com/ https://hakenmusic.com/
    - technothrasher 4y ago
      Thanks for this. I'm listening to "Aquarius" now and I like what I hear so far.
  - technothrasher 4y ago
    > Marillion My entire late 80's high school days were pretty much just listening to Marillion over and over again until my Walkman would wear out the cassette and I'd have to get another copy. Just something about Fish's brooding bitter anger appealed to my angsty teenage mind. Once Fish left though, they quickly moved away from what I was interest in listening to. These days the one prog album I seem to keep going back to is "Tales From the Lush Attic" by IQ, although "Relayer" by Yes has been getting some good play lately.

elevaet 4y ago

> Coltrane is known for his avant-garde composition, and even he repeats (often on a much smaller scale than a pop tune). "A love supreme" immediately sprang to mind.. I guess all that repetition worked.

FumblingBear 4y ago

Thanks for sharing your experience with us! I'm not a professional musician, but I've played and performed in different settings for about 15 years. Until reading your comment, I didn't realize that many people don't get songs stuck in their head. I often get very long and complex songs stuck in my head for hours to days. Sometimes it's just portions, but sometimes it can be the full song. I don't quite know how to describe my recollection of music, but it seems to be somewhat akin to eiditic memory, but for sounds. After looking into things, the term eichoic memory seems to come up, but I'm not sure it quite encapsulates what I'm trying to express. Out of curiousity, do you have aphantasia? I do, and often wonder if the strength of my music recollection comes from a lack of visual recollection in my mind. Sometimes it takes a few listens to fully memorize a song, but I can revisit music many years later and still have perfect recollection of the piece despite the complexity of the music I tend towards. For example, my favorite band is Between the Buried and Me (a progressive metal band) and their compositions tend to use a ton of complex and mixed meter, as well as non-repetitive rhythmic patterns. Despite all that, I have perfect recollection of their music—even for songs over 17 minutes long. Sorry for the long response—your comment just triggered some things I've been thinking about for a while and I wanted to process them and share.

geoelectric 4y ago
I have aphantasia, and I also remember songs in multiple parts vividly. I won't go so far as to say it's eichoic--I can't, for example, turn around and just play a version of it on piano like some people I know, and I'm fairly sure I'm recalling an approximation in a lot of cases--but it's a detailed enough recollection I can "listen" to songs that way by recalling them. It's very much in contrast to my non-existent ability to recall even a familiar image. I've considered cause/effect on this before and personally just decided it was probably coincidence combined with my poor visual memory making the other types seem that much more impressive. There's no particular compensatory mechanism I can think of that would explain remembering sound better because I remember vision worse. Interestingly, I've never been any better at composition (i.e., imagining novel music) because of this. To the extent I've composed, I still pick stuff out a part at a time and figure out how it fits rather than starting with a finished sound in my head to recreate.

dhosek 4y ago

I once had a gig playing piano at a restaurant. It was a weekday mid-day stretch and I was scheduled for about 3 or 4 hours, as I recall. I put together about a 90 minute set of stuff out of my fake books that I figured I could do without embarrassing myself and surely no one would stay at the restaurant longer than 90 minutes. Well, being weekday mid-day, the restaurant was nearly empty and there was some guy who sat there by himself for over two hours. I ended up taking some of my standards and doing what I could to stretch them out, playing lots of repeats, doing extended improvs over the changes. I turned Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” which I normally did as about a 4–5 minute piece following the structure of the Maynard Ferguson version which was the basis for the charts that I originally learned the song from into a 10 minute piece with extended improvs and some bonus repeats. “Night Train” turned into another 10-minute number. And this guy just did not leave. Finally, when I was almost out of material, he got up, dropped a twenty¹ in my tip jar and headed out. ⸻ 1. I also got paid by the restaurant, but as I recall, he was the only customer out of the single-digit number of diners in the restaurant who left a tip.

philipov 4y ago

You know that feeling when you wake up in the morning, and the first thought in your head is the sound of the song that's been there for 3 days already? You must have been dreaming the song before you woke up!